A Webcast on antimatter live from CERN

14 November, 2000

Geneva, 14 November. Dive into the anti-world from the Web ! On 18 and 21 November, you will be able to discover antimatter thanks to a Webcast live from CERN1. An hour long show for the general public broadcast through the Internet will show you how and why CERN's antimatter factory is producing anti-particles. Interviews, video clips and questions from the public are on the programme.

A TV studio set up inside CERN's onsite exhibition, Microcosm, will establish links with one of the Laboratory's particle accelerator control rooms, the antimatter factory itself, and specialised scientists. With a simple click of a mouse, Web-spectators will be able to follow young reporters hunting for the secrets of antimatter.

Commissioned last August, CERN's antimatter factory, the antiproton decelerator or AD, feeds antiprotons to experiments that are trying to solve the mysteries of antimatter. Physicists want to understand why mankind, the earth, and the universe are made of matter instead of antimatter.

The first Webcast on 18 November will be at 20.00. It will be broadcast from CERN and from The Exploratorium, San Francisco's famous science centre as part of a series of Webcasts from CERN from 11 to 21 November. The second antimatter Webcast on 21 November will be at 10.30, when school students all over Europe will be able to tune in. Two school classes will follow the programme through a video-conference system. But all European schools are invited to follow the Webcast from their classrooms. Each pupil will have the opportunity to ask questions during the Webcast, just like their contemporaries in the studio audience at CERN.

This Webcasting experiment anticipates the growing use of the Web to broadcast to the four corners of the planet, offering spectators a kind of customized TV. It offers proof that the Web is a powerful pedagogical tool, opening up a window on scientific knowledge to pupils from the remotest regions of the world. CERN, where the Web was born, is at the forefront of this development.

CERN's Webcast series is part of Netd@ys, an initiative by the European Commission aiming at encouraging the use of new technologies for education and culture.

The site includes technical details and instructions on how follow the Webcast. And if you want to be part of the live audience, book your seat now:

by email : livefromcern.info@cern.ch

telephone : +41 22 767 8484
fax : +41 22 767 8710

1.CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and Unesco have observer status.